Kierkegaard, existential luck, and the multiverse

This is one of those heady moments when a lot of ideas are intersecting in my imagination at once, in this case, Kierkegaardian identity theory, the problem of “existential luck”, and a theological concern with parallel universes that, I’m cerain, most people living today would consider utterly mad. Much of what follows, as with so much else in my thoughts, comes from excavating the interests of my childhood. I should also note that I dare not go so far as to say that I truly and literally believe what I’m about to say herein; nevertheless, I also dare not go so far as to say it’s impossible, either — indeed, the whole foundation is possibility.

I think the crux issue to introduce first is the problem of existential luck. By “existential luck” I mean something very specific, very vague, and altogether fundamental to the ethical problem of moral luck: why am I seeing through these eyes, inhabiting this body in this particular sociohistorical milieu? This question is one version of that ultimate question of human existence, Why am I alive? Or: why are we, i.e., you, me, and everyone alive today, inhabiting this moment in time and space? Why do we exist at all?

Particularly if one subscribes to the monotheisms, this is a distressing moral question, as it means those of us who are Christian, Muslim, or Baha’i, as inheritors of salvific revelations that occurred at specific historical moments, are in some sense “luckier” than those who lived before the revelations. Over the years, our traditions have tried to finesse the problem in various ways. Doctrinally, though, the trend has been to rely upon divine volition: God decided. Unfortunately, I don’t think that neutralizes the problem of fortune, precisely because, as far as we know (putting side any beliefs in reincarnation), we had no influence over God’s decision — in other words, from our perspective, divine predestination and blind dumb luck, at least in this regard, are effectively, maybe even per definition, the same.

The second issue is parallel universes. There are many different conceptions of these. Andrei Linde and eternal inflation theory, for example, predicts that big bangs should be a fairly routine occurrence which generates a vast network of universes, each with different physical characteristics, and sometimes probably fragmentary variants of our own. David K. Lewis, meanwhile, proposed the actual existence of counterfactuals, or in other words, the alternate histories of science fiction authors and the thought experiments of philosophers. I’ve recently been watching the J.J. Abrams television show, Fringe, and I was a childhood fan of the show Sliders, both of which explored the Lewisian notion of parallel universes with something of a vengeance.

Overall, though, I would prefer the “tree branch” version of the multiverse, in which every choice divides into at least two directions, so that in one universe, I have decided to write this blog post, and in another, I have not.

To be clear, the tree branch theory, whatever its scientific merits or demerits, is the most interesting, and not only because it’s the most relatable. In fact, it’s actually pretty radical, because it practically reduces the concepts of choice and moment into each other, and then demands an extreme refinement of the latter concept: just how long is a moment? The answer: an infinite regress of subdivision, Xeno’s dichotomy paradox gone quantum. That therefore means, in the least, an infinity of unrealized realities, at the most, an infinity of their realizations. This is an alternative to both the Lindean view of semi-realizations or statistical variants, as well as to the Avicennian-Leibnizian notion that this universe we know is the “best of all possible iterations”, much less the Emersonian notion of necessity, as he articulates in “Fate” (to which I have tended to instinctively prefer):

“The secret of the world is, the tie between person and event. Person makes event, and event person. [...] He thinks his fate alien, because the copula is hidden. But the soul contains the event that shall befall it, for the event is only the actualization of its thoughts; and what we pray to ourselves for is always granted. The event is the print of your form. It fits you like your skin. What each does is proper to him. Events are the children of his body and mind. We learn that the soul of Fate is the soul of us, as Hafiz sings, ‘Alas! till now I had not known, My guide and fortune’s guide are one.’”

“This universe we know.” That presumes a kind of unity. Of course, you and I cannot know for certain that, at any given moment, we are inhabiting/constituting only one universe, rather than being pluralized, moment to moment, decision to decision, across an incalculable variety. Such a variety, mathematically-speaking, would resemble less a tree branch than entangled and constantly growing clumps of moss, since the huge majority of universes would profoundly resemble each other. To put it another way, if at this very moment we wanted to set out across the multiverse to find a universe significantly differentiated from the one we know (putting aside the fact that the choice to make such a pilgrimage would necessarily result in more pluralization, and perhaps thereby be defeated by Xeno’s dichotomy paradox), it would take a very long time before we would enter environments noticeably unfamiliar, i.e., when we finally begin to leave one clump of realizations and enter another.

As a religious person, the mere possibility of such a multiverse represents a huge theoretical spiritual quandary for me, not only by radicalizing the existential luck problem, but also raising questions about the ontology of the soul: to what extent are the nearly infinite iterations of myself singularly or pluralistically ensouled? In other words, is my immortal soul, whatever it is, specific to this Chris Schwartz at this moment-decision (however that moment-decision may be finely demarcated), or the underlying unity of an innumerable amount of Chris Schwartzes? The first option is terrifying, for it renders the continuity I experience between moments-decisions ontologically illusory. The second option, however, can account for continuity but not for responsibility: are all the Chris Schwartzes responsible for each other at the moment of posthumous judgement? Are they their quantum brothers’ keepers?

I should note that the Baha’i Faith can countenance the possibility of a multiverse. The following quotes from the Baha’i Writings are interesting. Employing Avicennian-Illuminiationist cosmological categories, they could be referring to a single universe with several dimensions and/or an afterlife with several levels, as many Baha’is take them to mean — and, in truth, as I take them to mean — and/or they could be implying the existence of a multiverse:

“As to thy question concerning the worlds of God. Know thou of a truth that the worlds of God are countless in their number, and infinite in their range. None can reckon or comprehend them except God, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise. [...] Verily I say, the creation of God embraceth worlds besides this world, and creatures apart from these creatures. In each of these worlds He hath ordained things which none can search except Himself, the All-Searching, the All-Wise. Do thou meditate on that which We have revealed unto thee, that thou mayest discover the purpose of God, thy Lord, and the Lord of all worlds. In these words the mysteries of Divine Wisdom have been treasured” ((Baha’u'llah, Gleanings, pp. 151-152).

“Praise be to God Who hath ever caused His Names and Attributes to penetrate the degrees of existence; Who hath made the effects of those Names and Attributes to shine resplendent and their signs to be firmly established in both the hidden and manifest worlds. By them He hath made the holy realities that are informed by His grace and are the recipients of His outpourings to be the sole revealers of all that pertaineth unto Him, and hath caused them to move through the firmament of perfection in arcs of descent and ascent” (Abdu’l-Baha, Tablet of the Universe).

Baha’is tend to take something not unlike a Hegelian view to address the problem of salvific justice for those who came before Baha’u'llah’s revelation. Positing a multiverse offers another strategy, namely, to ratchet up the statistics of salvation, and moreover, inevitably there must be moss clumps of possibilities that are in fact vastly, vastly different from ours, so that one could even posit some universes wherein divine intervention was not even necessary, and others where other divine strategies had to be employed. (Theologically, that’s most certainly a controversial position to even suggest, but if it errs, it errs for the sake of theodicy.)

In terms of existential luck, Kierkegaard may supply a solution, for in his conception, the self is not created ex nihilo, but is chosen from among a legion of other possibilities. This becomes clear in his idea of the leap of faith, in which the faithful agent makes a choice by which he or she leaves behind the human realm of reason and control for the dimension of absurdity. This dichotomy is not only between reason and absurdity, but also interior and exterior, individual and context. In Habermas’ words, “Every individual first encounters himself as the historical product of contingent life circumstances, but in ‘choosing’ himself as this product he constitues a self to which the rich concreteness of the life history in which he merely found himself is attributed as somehtin for which he will account retrospectively” (The New Conservatism, p. 260). Tilley, explaining Habermas’ exegesis, writes:

“[Habermas sees in Kierkegaard] a way to recognize the facticity inherent in human life and the ability of the individual both to transcend and take ‘responsibility for one’s own life history’… [Kierkegaard's] conception of the self [is one in which] one’s own life history, which is not chosen, is encountered by a spontaneously acting subject who becomes conscious of being the very one who made this life history. Taking responsibility for oneself is a rational reconstruction of one’s life in such a way that one also takes responsibility for the direction of one’s life. The self is constituted in the paradoxical choice to be who I am and who I want to be. The life history of a person makes an individual distinct from others when one’s life history is taken up as one’s own” (Kierkegaard’s Influence on Social-Political Thought, pp. 76-77).

Now, where Habermas seeks to secularize and more thoroughly socialize Kierkegaard’s specifically Christian conception of this transcending-actualizing self to articulate a social-communicative theory of selfdom (ibid. pp. 77-78), I may be able to employ, as a member of the Baha’i Faith, to the problem of parallel universes. Thus, instead of one life history, you and I and all of us have countless lives, countless histories — but also countless Kierkegaardian choices, countless leaps of faith, countless opportunities.

In a sense, such a view means the statistics of salvation are even more enormously increased. Why? For at this very moment, as I’m writing this, there are countless other Chris Schwartzes, each of them becoming aware of the very possibility of the others’ existences through the power of imagination and across the expanse of thought — and each of them becoming determined to help the others.

Of course, I need not suppose that the continuity of moments-decisions I’m currently experiencing is the primary moss-clump; perhaps we are one of the more deviant wings of my world-line. Moreover, doubtlessly, many of us shall remain in ignorance, and many of us shall fail, but if a critical mass could be reached, what then?

Now, I confess this view runs the unfortunate risk of reducing salvation to raw mathematics, which is why I’m not condoning it; consider my wild speculations here a thought-experiment (Lewisian modal realities notwithstanding). Yet, it’s an exhilarating vision, for now selfhood, no matter how seemingly small and inconsequential, thus becomes a rather epic experience. Each soul would now no longer have merely one body nor one mind at its disposal, but an army, committed to the goal of growth and progress, both in this world and the next — in both worlds’ incomprehensible infinitude and variety.

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